Operation: Jungbrunnen - Interrogation (backdated)

[x-deadpool.livejournal.com]

The teams reunite at the facility and scramble to understand what was done to North.


David's screaming echoed in Wade's ears as he faced the last living scientist in the facility. He tutted softly at the man's whimpering, barely audible beneath the undulating pitch of North's voice. "A bullet to the knee is the least of your problems, doc," he murmured, sitting on his heels. He tapped the man's shoulder with the barrel of his gun, the heated metal left a small, black smudge on the white lab coat. "What'd you do to him?"

Artie had been working through the papers on the table, alternately photographing and memorising the pages one after another after another. He held one page out to Wade, tapping it. It looked like some kind of ...medical jargon stuff. Treatments. Injections, maybe. He blew an image of the page up big and gave a nasty smile as a red arrow pointed to it.

"Facade, text Wallflower with any pharamcopic terms you find." Marie-Ange pulled an earbud from her pocket and snapped it into her ear. "~Call Wallflower~," she said, voice pitched low. "Wallflower, I need an emergency medical consult. Facade is texting you information now. We need sedation on Maverick, his system has been flooded with experimental chemicals."

"W-we..." The scientist began in German only to stop and clutch at his knee. His throat clicked, the sound audible beneath North's voice. "We only - we did what they told us. What they told us - just, just inject him. But you - you killed them. All of them. You killed them."

Looking toward Doug, Wade let the still-hot barrel of his gun rest against the scientist's pulse point where it hammered at the base of his throat.

"I was just following orders, is that what you're saying?" Doug asked, then spat disgustedly to one side of the scientist. "Do you even read your history? It was a pitiful excuse seventy years ago, and it is even more pitiful now." He pressed his own gun to the man's throat opposite Wade's and leaned in close. "You injected our friend, and you may very well have killed him, and you expect us to mourn for your colleagues? Do you even know what it was you injected him with?"

"The serum," the scientist half-wailed, swallowing convulsively again. Obviously the reminder that he had not one but two guns pressed to his throat did nothing good for his self confidence. "A v-variant. Like Captain America. To see what it did. They said... they said he was expendable." The last word trailed off into a whisper, the man's voice completely failing him as he realized just who he'd said that to and how badly they might react.

"Expendable." Doug's voice was nearly a growl, and his fingers flexed around the grip of his pistol. "This is what you are going to do. You are going to tell that young man-" he jerked his head toward Artie. "-everything you know about the variations in the serum. In very detailed and precise English. And if you do that, I will consider not telling the other man with the gun to your throat that you consider our friend expendable, and as a result, just how expendable I find you." He eased backward slightly, then a belated thought came to him. "And once you are done with that, you will tell us who the mysterious 'they' are."

Eyes tracking to the young man Doug indicated, the scientist nodded minutely and began reciting everything that he could think of that might be even the tiniest bit useful to them in accented English that only wavered slightly from nerves. Wade didn't move an inch, sitting on his haunches still as a statue, his gun poised precisely as the information flowed. By the time the scientist got to the point where he was telling them that he didn't actually know who 'they' were, that he'd received instructions via an email account, the mercenary was less and less inclined to let the other man live.

Wanda and Marie-Ange had not been idle while the others had been grilling the remaining scientist. David's screaming hadn't stopped in all that time and they were frantically trying to save him before his body just ... gave out. But none of them were doctors and whatever they'd pumped into his body went far beyond the first aid they knew how to administer. Wanda was trying to keep David's thrashing (and changing, rippling) body still long enough for them to do something, anything, to help.

"There has to be a sedative!" she yelled, her feet sliding and skidding as she attempted to leverage her weight against him. "Something in this fucking place has to be usable!"

"Look for what? - merde, Wallflower, talk slower, I cannot remember all that so quickly." Marie-Ange's attention flipped from Wanda to the trays of vials and syringes to North to the trays to her phone conversation and back to North and Wanda. "Choloro, this has a choloro on it, no, this is wrong, this one too, this one is... " She finally shut her eyes and grabbed at a vial. "Choloro. Benzo. Triazol. I think this is it." She loaded a syringe - carefully, carefully - and waited.

For Wanda's movements to sync, however briefly, with North's and in that moment, she jabbed the syringe into his arm and pressed the plunger.

The scientist's words had trailed off as the group near North acted and, while the German's screaming hadn't immediately stopped, whatever Marie-Ange had injected him with appeared to have at least taken the edge off. Wade glanced up, the briefest shift of his eyes. North's body was still doing the bizarre increase and decrease permutation, but it seemed like it had slowed down a bit. "Facade," he said, voice cold as his eyes turned back to the scientist.

Artie bit his lip. Deep breath in. out. in and he lifted the gun, aimed and fired, the scientist's face seared into his mind. He couldn't forget anything he saw - that was part of his power and now there was a part of his mind that was screaming in horror but he'd learned not to listen to it back at the start of the year. Artie breathed out and lowered his gun.

"Pulse is slowing, Wallflower." Marie-Ange had tuned out the rest of the group, eyes laser focused on the ragged inhale and exhale of her German teammate. "What should I look for?" Her attention broke from North and the phone conversation with Laurie and met Wanda's eyes. "If he stops breathing, she says to slap him, very hard, and only use a defibrillator as a last resort, and check for shock in half a minute, and... " She trailed off. "And lots of other medical sorts of instructions, yes, Wallflower, I promise I am listening."